Screwball Part 2

So you met Ariel yesterday. Interesting right? You have no idea…

Now for those of you in the crowd with sensitivities I will say this now, stop reading! What I’m about to share is going to rub certain people in a very raw fashion and I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up losing some readers to it but there’s things in life you can’t avoid doing, there’s things in life that you have to finish once you start. If you catch my drift and are already getting upset, stop reading.

You have been warned.

The conversation drifted from just catching up to me being told she could play with other people while she was married; her husband was okay with this. They have what’s considered an open relationship. Now I was raised old school and personally I don’t usually share. Still, I put my cards on the table with you guys about what I felt about her when I first met her, would you say no if someone you had felt something for called you up? Think about that hard before you answer.

So I answer her question honestly. “Yes, I definitely felt something for you. I felt a lot for you actually.”

For the first time in a long time that was greeted with a good answer. It was a greeted with her laughter. Her laugh is intoxicating. It’s what you expect a pixie to sound like when they tease you about something. It’s like hearing the best song you remember from your life and having it played just for you. I haven’t met anyone that has a laugh like that except her.

The conversation turns to the rules. The rule is that she can have playmates but she’s married to him. So I can be her boyfriend but he’s still her husband. Does that make sense? I know it sounds weird, it sounds weird SAYING it, but it makes sense.

To understand it, you’d have to know us. You’d have to know what it feels like to talk to her and there’s no way for me to convey that with my words, it’s a feeling in your heart, your soul and you mind. It makes you feel weak and strong at the same time.

The rest of it is a blur. I know that my admittance of what I felt led to hers. It led to us figuring out how long we’d felt that way about each other and the missed signals that we had both not taken up. We talk about instances in our past that we could remember with clear and precise clarity. Things that most other people would take for granted we etched into our memories to go back over again and again.

By the time we’re done it’s been two hours. We’ve talked to each other about things that we never thought we’d get a chance to and I need to go to bed.

Yesterday yesterday was more of an eye opener. It was a wake up call to your dear Shaman in a way that I won’t soon forget.

I slept like shit the night before. What ifs ran through my mind like little kids in a playground.

The first thing I get a chance to do is drop her a message on myspace and thank her for calling. How happy I was to hear from her and how we fell right back into step with each other, like no time has passed.

Then we talked some more and things got more, serious. See the thing with us is that we’re silly, together or apart, it’s part of who we are. Moreover we enjoy the time with each other so much we don’t want it to end.

“Were you in love with me?”

Deep breath.

“Yes, I was and still am. It’s been a constant.”

Ok wait, don’t go getting all messed up about this. Look you guys can judge all you want but how am I going to say no? She would be able to tell, she’d read it on me. It’s the God’s honest truth that she would sniff out the truth in no time flat. We might suck at signals but can read each other well otherwise and I’m telling you now that if I said no at that moment and she asked me again when we saw each other, she’d know I’d had lied.

This door is smaller.

The conversation that we had yesterday lasted all day except for a few breaks, we bared our souls to each other in a candid way. I know that some of you are upset, she’s married and here I am doing this with her but sometimes, sometimes the heart speaks louder than ethics, morals or anything else. I’m sorry.

At one point she tells me:
You know that if I wasn't married, I would be yours, right?I think I could honestly say that I love you. Even in love with you a little bit.

Fuck.

After that, we pretty much let loose with each other. How can I not say something to that? Honestly, would you stop yourself? Would you keep your head? If you answered yes, then you need to check your heart.

I pour my soul out to her in a way that I haven’t done in years. I hadn’t even done it with my wife for years, this woman, Ariel, is reaching me in a way that I can’t say I’ve been reached in a while and she does it with her soft voice, her quiet giggle and her heart. She wraps herself around me completely and even with this description I’m not doing it justice. She makes me remember what it’s like to feel alive.

She’s my maiden fair, I’m her knight. That’s what I see in my mind. You want to get really obnoxious about it call me Lancelot cause she’s my Guinevere.

After knowing that it stops being a thing about ‘when we see each other again, whenever that may be’ it’s “I need to see you this weekend”.

Then we have the last bombshell of the conversation. She’s gifted. For those of you who believe, she’s got sight. She’s able to see things sometimes, given the right circumstance and being allowed to.

What starts it off is my retelling of the first time that I saw her, for the purposes of the rest of the story I’m going to recite it to you guys.

“I remember the first time that I saw you. I had come in late for some such reason, mainly because I was IT and the Assistant Supervisor, Caroline, bee-lined it straight for me. She explained to me that there was a girl in this first group that has told her that if she would just be allowed to bring her keyboard from home she could be more efficient with taking the calls. She said she had told the girl that IT would be in later and discuss it with her.

“So here I go out in the work area, it’s the first batch of operators that we’re training. You’re all huddled right in the middle of the room, row of cubicles on either side of you. I’m looking at the faces in the crowd, looking at the motley crew of workers that the temp agency sent us and then I see you.

“You were sitting near one of the computers to the right of you. You had short black hair that ended in a shade of red. You had on a pair of cute glasses and you were beautiful. I remember that my heart started beating a little bit faster when I saw you. I got this feeling in my gut, like butterflies and then Caroline came up behind me. She knew me best out of all of the people that I worked with. We’d worked together for a long time at this point and I’d watched girls through the glass that passed by and knew my looks and what they meant. She came up behind me, touched my arm and told me to not even think about it. Then you looked at me and smile and I just lost it. Right then and there I knew there was more to you and that I needed to find it out. I knew that whatever I was feeling was only going to get more intense. Then Caroline cut through again and told me to be cool. So I was cool.”

And that moment is always going to be in my head, that first moment will be something I’ll never forget. It was a breath of fresh air and in the same moment, the remembrance of something better and bigger and stronger that I had forgotten about. It was kismet, it was fate, it was love, it was light, it was everything that you could hope to find in life and it was sitting right there in front of me, giving me a smile that could have easily cause Troy to go to war as much as Helen. It was a moment captured in time that is always going to be mine.

That confession led to some more from her. Like I said some people won’t really understand the rest of this, the rest will nod in understanding and realize that there is something more to all of this.

“I have to tell you something. I thought that maybe it was just wishful thinking, at least that’s what I chalked it up to when it happened but now that you’ve said I know better and I wish one of us would have spoken up sooner. That moment that I saw you for the first time, I saw something. I have some sight, clairvoyance, but I didn’t think that’s what it was. I just thought it was the crush of a girl on a handsome man.

“I had a vision the moment I saw you. In it we were happy, we were together and we were expecting.”

Even typing this it jolts me. She tells me this and I break a little and cry a little more. Here’s the woman that I’ve felt something for for I don’t know how long and she’s telling me that she saw exactly what I’ve searched for my whole life and it was with her.

“How long into the future was this?”

“It was ten years. We had three other kids, Gabriel Jr., Jesse and Matthew. We looked happy.”

There was some more detail but that’s detail that I’m going to keep for me. If there was ever any doubt in my heart, soul or mind that I was in love with her, it was gone at that moment. There was all of it; we had bared something to one another that no one else could truly be a part of. Did I cry? Yes. I’ve been lost in a sea of loneliness for so long and here was a woman that could literally see a future with me. She had been made happy by being with me of all people and she was sad because it was a road not taken and she wished she had just like I did.

So my travel bag is packed and I’m ready to roll. I’m driving out to see her as soon as my shift is done. I don’t have expectations, I lost the right to those and I know it but even a stolen moment with her will last me a lifetime. Knowing that there was a moment in time where the rest of the world melted away and that my love for her was enough to sustain her will let me die in peace because I will feel like my love matters.

You’ll hear from me, you always do. Just if you get a chance, wish me luck, wish me strength and wish me love because when she’s in the picture, it’s all my heart can see.